The Ten Tenets of Effective Leadership

How to raise your effectiveness as a leader – ten things you can start doing today

Often when coaching new or emerging leaders (and even those more experienced) I often find they have the impression that effective leadership is this enigmatic, intangible concept (or at the very least have a hard time of defining exactly what good leadership is).

Before we go any further however, we need to define management vs. leadership in this context. Management is role authority afforded to you by the organisation through your position. All you need to be a manager is to convince someone to give you the job. However to be an effective manager, you need to also be a leader. Leadership on the other hand is not a given. It is won through being the kind of person others want to follow. Managing well will make you a good leader. Leading well will often make you a good manager but you are more likely to succeed if you have the role authority to go with it.

There’s some good news and some bad news here (depending on how you look at things). The good news is that effective leadership is tangible and not at all mysterious. The bad (or better!) news is, in my experience the basic concepts for being an effective leader are really quite boring because its just getting the work done well. However boring or not, get it right and the rest will follow.

So the following is my guide to the basic concepts that will get you off to a good start at being a more effective leader:

1) Build a relationship individually with your team

You might think relationship building with your team goes without saying, however so many leaders do not put dedicated time aside to meet with their direct reports for the sole purpose of building the relationship, and there is no other way to effectively do it.

Building this relationship is crucial for many reasons. I have seen many leaders make up for other shortcomings, and in fact overcome them, by doing this one thing due to being more in touch with their area. Also, leaders will at different points, have to draw on the trust of their subordinates to get the work done. They may need to draw a little or a lot, but to do this, there needs to be trust there in the first place to not bankrupt the relationship, because once that happens there’s often no going back.

Putting half an hour in your diary every week to meet one on one with every direct report in your team will build the relationship and trust you will require to get the work done. This meeting is for your team to talk with you one on one about whatever they like, work related or not. You should not set the agenda (other than to let them know it’s their meeting to talk about whatever they like), and sit there and listen. You should only bring up anything you would like to discuss at the end when they have finished speaking if there is time.

If you think half an hour out of your week to meet with each member of your team is excessive, remember it is only just over 1% of your working week (assuming a 38 hour week). Does each person in your team not deserve 1% of your time per week? In my experience, doing this one thing actually saves time as it assists to address issues and your team will often save up things they need to ask you for this meeting rather than interrupting your day at unplanned intervals.

Once the meetings are in your diary they should be for the same day and time each week where possible and not cancelled wherever possible, because if you do cancel for something else, you are effectively telling your team member that whatever came up is more important than them.

You could stop reading here and be about 50% more effective if you implement this one thing. If you do nothing else, do this. If you’re not sure give it a go for 3-6 months and you will quickly see what a difference it makes. It can feel a bit werid at first but it will change your relationships for the better.

2) Time management (and yes I am talking about your own!)

Be aware of how you spend your time. As a leader it should predominately be spent paving the path for tomorrow rather than concerned with today. The frontline team should be dealing in the day to day, and if they’re not, you may be in need of some job redesign. What this should mean that emails can be checked once or twice a day. No one

I know of is paid just to ‘do email’ all day but it is what many of us seem to do. Diarise half an hour to check your email once or twice a day and when you do, only answer then and there if it can be done in less than a few minutes or to tell the sender when you will be able to action the request. If the email will take longer than a few minutes to action, add to your task list or diarise in your calendar. This way we are starting to accurately reflect the amount of work that needs to be done in a week and making time to concentrate on the task at hand amongst the meetings and other work we have in our diaries.

Why is this important? For a few reasons. Firstly, man or woman, multitasking is a fallacy. Flitting between work and emails and everything else going on makes you feel busy, however many studies have shown is not as effective or efficient as focusing on one task at a time. When you do focus on one task at at time , you actually get more done and you do it to a higher quality. Secondly, our brains burn excess energy when trying to switch between tasks and this is exhausting us. Try it the other way and see what a difference it makes. How does this relate to leadership? Because no matter how good a leader you are, you still need to be good at your job.

3) Communicate the vision and have a plan

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” Benjamin Franklin.

A leader by definition is someone who is able to command others to follow. So where are your team following you to if you do not have a plan? It is your responsibility as a leader to have a clear vision of where you want to head. There may be ambiguity in your organisation, or business unit due to external influences, however that aside you can still develop the vision for your team. Once you know your vision, you need a plan to get you there in a set period of time. A good plan will communicate the vision, the ‘why’ of your team and priorities for the next time period to get you there. At this point you should seek input from your team, your manager and any other stakeholders then break the actions into sizable chunks, allocate timeframes and responsible team members and measure progress at your regular team meetings and in one on one performance meetings (see point 8).

4) Cross functional and organisational communication

It is also important to share information and build relationships with others in the organisation you are required to work with (or may be required to work with in the future). No one can operate in isolation as well as they can in a team. And while getting out of your area and comfort zone is not always something any of us ever race off to do, if you put it in place you will be glad that you did. Formal monthly catch ups work best in my experience, but other ways are effective too. It doesn’t matter so much how you do it as long as you do.

5) Authenticity

While it may be tempting to want to come across a certain way to your team, colleagues and superiors, if its not real, others will soon see through it and they won’t necessarily like or respect what they see. Of course, we have different selves, the way we act at work is not the way we usually act at home or among friends, but our work self needs to be a true version of ourselves. If you find you are having to bend your personality or values too much for an organisation, it is probably time to question whether the role or organisation is the right one for you. A value connection with the work and the organisation is important for success and while finding this fit can sometimes be difficult, once you do it feels like coming home.

Closely related is also being liked vs respected. The former is not important, the latter is essential. Also when your team makes a mistake its your fault. Whey they do something great, the credit is theirs. Welcome to leadership, no one ever said it was easy!

6) Represent the organisation you work for

While it is important to be authentic, it is equally as important as a leader to be a true representative of the organisation. If you put your hand out for the pay packet, you are also committing to uphold the values, direction and initiatives of the organisation you work for. As a leader you don’t get to have a different view. Have you ever heard a manager say something along the lines of : “team I am sorry, I don’t agree with this but it’s what the organisation wants so it’s what we’re doing’. This is not okay.

While doing this may align you with the team in the short term or make communicating changes or delivering a message seem easier to you, it doesn’t induce respect or reflect professionalism. To be clear I am not saying you should engage in unethical behaviour or assist with the delivery of something you strongly disagree with. If this is the case you should definitely voice your concerns with your superiors prior to engaging with your team. At the end of the day, as with point five above, if the organisations direction or values are truly not aligned with your own it is time to question your place there.

7) Set clear expectations

No matter what your level in an organisation, if you have a manager it is their job to set objectives for the work they require you to do.

So when as a leader you do this, be clear. You need to decide the outcomes expected of your team and communicate these to them. Starting with the position description and flowing through to periodic goal setting and task assignments.

When setting objectives or tasks for your team they should be outcome based and clear. You need to have already worked through what the end result looks like when the job is well done , and communicate this. Put another way, if you haven’t taken the time to work out what the end result should be, whose fault is it when you are unhappy with the end result? For example asking someone to go away and research a better way to deliver a service may result in any number of outcomes. However setting out context purpose to explain why the information is needed, asking for a 3000 word report that answers a specific question and also advising when you need the information by and resources available to assist will likely realise two very different results. On a related note, you should also always ensure if assigning accountability for an outcome, you have also assigned the authority to make it happen. Not doing so is setting up your employee to fail.

8) Monitor performance regularly

While ‘what gets measured gets done’ might not always be true, “What gets measured gets managed” Peter Drucker. Or it is at least possible to.

Performance monitoring is not something that should be done just once or twice a year at formal performance appraisal time because HR is on your back. Good performance management means no surprises and provision of support and advice to enable employees to succeed all year round. Monthly meetings in addition to the weekly one on one (half an hour tacked on to the half hour 1:1 once a month) is often a good way to make sure this gets done. A simple template in excel or word is all you need, if one doesn’t already exist in your organisation, that aligns with your formal performance appraisal system. Come the end of the period the information can simply be transferred into that format. This will create far less headaches trying to recall what actually happened during the year; gives employees input during the process; and the chance to quickly catch and correct any deficiencies or miscommunication, clarify points, discuss additional resources or support and most importantly you know the work is being done.

9) Know where to draw the line (and stay on your side of it)

It is important to work out where your role ends and your subordinates start. There should be clear lines so you are not dipping down into your teams work and cramping their space, also you need to be free to focus on your work. Often being a leader means letting go of control. Set the boundaries and expectations but let your employees work out how to achieve their goals. At the end of the day that’s what you hired them for! Otherwise you may as well just do it yourself.

10) Engage and involve but be the decision maker

Engaging your employees and creating space for input into the direction of your team, initiatives and changes your team may face is imperative to success. You are not expected to have all the answers and your team can contribute a lot in the way of solving problems and coming up with new and better ways of doing things. Just ensure you set the context and purpose and are clear on who final decisions rest with (i.e. you!). Working meetings with your team to are a great way to achieve more together than you could on your own and have an engaged team that will own the solutions you come up with. Remember though, to spend the time diagnosing the issue or problem prior to jumping straight to solutions.

Also ensure you set and assign actions at the end of the meeting and add to your team meeting agenda to follow up on progress of action completion.

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One last point, before implementing any major change to the way you get work done it is always a good idea to let your team know first and why. Just a short email to say hey from know on I am going to be doing this and this is why.

Acknowledgements: I would like to acknowledge The Working Journey in this article. A lot of what I have adopted in the way I coach, mentor and apply in my own leadership practices is from my learnings in implementing and embedding Requisite Enterprise in a previous role.